School district REFUSES to let parents see LGBT videos after students were forced to watch them

This is insane. A school district in Pennsylvania didn’t even give parents the opportunity to object to their children being forced to watch LGBT videos as a part of of the school day. And now they won’t release the videos so that parents can see what their children have already seen:

CHRISTIAN POST – Parents and conservative activists are voicing outrage with a Pennsylvania school district that has refused to provide links to pro-LGBT videos that were shown to about 2,800 students in April.

In June, the social conservative religious freedom law firm the Liberty Counsel sent a letter to the superintendent of the East Penn School District to request that the district disclose links to four videos that were shown to students at Emmaus High School during the school district’s LGBT “Unity Week” in April.

The videos were part of activities organized for “Unity Week” and the nationwide “Day of Silence” sponsored by the national LGBT lobbying group GLSEN. The four videos that were shown to students were sponsored by the school’s Gay Straight Alliance club.

Principal Kate Kieres explained in a letter dated May 2 that one of the videos in question was titled “9 Questions Gay People Have About Straight People.” Another video was a clip from a CBS News story that explains what it means to be “gender fluid” and the negative experiences that people with fluid genders have in interacting with others.

The third video “was a compilation of clips celebrating marriage equality.” The fourth video was titled “Show your pride. Share your love” and included clips similar to those from the third video.

“I have looked further into the 1-2 minute video clips that were shown last week as part of the morning announcements,” Kieres wrote in the letter. “I learned that they were not created by the students in the communications class but were pulled from YouTube and other online sources by the students in our GSA club and sent to the TV studio as part of their ‘Day of Silence’ project. I also learned that this practice was not new this year. Similar videos have been shown during the week leading up to the ‘Day of Silence’ for at least the past four years.”

Despite parents’ requests to see the videos, Kieres stated that the school board solicitor has advised that “these videos cannot be sent to you, because they are part of a student project.”

Parents, along with the president of the state’s chapter of the American Family Association, objected at a school board meeting last month. They argued that their rights had been violated because they were not informed of the videos and were not given the opportunity to opt their children out of viewing the videos.

“Would the school allow the opposite view to be presented to the students?” Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a social conservative advocacy group, was quoted as saying by WFMZ-TV.

In the June 22 letter to the school district, Liberty Counsel attorney Richard Mast threatened potential legal action under the state’s “Right to Know” law if the school doesn’t provide the parents with the links to the videos and all emails sent to the principal or the school’s GSA adviser pertaining to the “Day of Silence,” GLSEN or any of the videos.

In what universe is it okay that parents can’t see what their children are being taught? They are public schools, which means everything they teach should be accessible, at the very least, to the parents of the kids who attend the school.

But not these LGBT videos? Why are they special? Just because they were part of a student project? That’s ridiculous. Once these videos are shown to the students, then it becomes the school’s responsibility to share it with the parents. They don’t need to reveal who the students were who created it.

I hope these parents sue the pants off of this school, not just for keeping the videos hidden, but for forcing students to watch them without their permission in the first place. On such a sensitive issue they should have at least forewarned parents so they could take some kind of action to protect their kids.


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